King of Thorns (The Broken Empire 2)

“Do you see them?” Gorgoth rumbled at my shoulder. The depth of his voice took me by surprise as always.

“If by ‘them’ you mean mountains, then yes. Otherwise, no.”

He pointed with one thick finger, almost the width of Gog’s forearm. “Caves.”

I still didn’t see them, but in the end I did. Cave mouths at the base of a sharp fall. Not that dissimilar from Gorgoth’s old home beneath Mount Honas.

“Yes,” I said. “They are.” I thought that sometimes perhaps Gorgoth should just keep holding on to those precious words.

We pressed on. Higher up and the going gets too steep and too treacherous for horses. We left our mounts with Sim and Grumlow, continuing on foot, trudging on through a thin layer of icy snow. The peaks of Halradra’s sons look broken off, jagged, forged with violence. The old man could pass as a common mountain with no hint of a crater until you scramble up through snow-choked gullies and find the lake laid out before you, sudden and without announcement.

“Happy now?” Sindri climbed up beside me and found a perch where the wind had taken the snow from a rock. He looked happy enough himself despite his tone.

“It’s a sight and a half, isn’t it?” I said.

Gorgoth clambered up with Gog on his shoulder.

“I like this mountain,” Gog said. “It has a heart.”

“The lake is a strange blue,” I said. “Is the water tainted?”

“Ice,” Sindri said. “The water’s just meltwater, a yard deep if that, run down off the crater slope. The lake stays frozen all year, underneath.”

“Well now. There’s a thing,” I said. And I had two facts by the corners.

We hunkered down in the lee of some rocks a little way below the crater rim and watched the strange blue of those waters as we ate a cold meal from Alaric’s kitchens.

“What kind of heart does the mountain have, Gog?” I threw chicken bones down the slope and licked the grease from my fingers.

He paused, closing his eyes to think. “Old, slow, warm.”

“Does it beat?” I asked.

“Four times,” Gog said.

“Since we started climbing?”

“Since we saw the smoke as we rode in from the bridge,” Gog said.

“Eagle.” Row pointed into the hazy blue above us. He reached for his bow.

“Good eyes as always, Row.” I held his arm. “Let the bird fly.”

“So,” said Sindri, huddled, braids flailing in the wind. “What next?”

“I’d like to see those caves,” I said. Gorgoth’s observation felt more important all of a sudden. Precious even.

We started to make our way down, strangely a more difficult proposition than the climb, as if Halradra wanted to keep hold of us. The rock seemed to crumble under every heavy downhill step, with the ice to help any faller on his way. I caught Sindri at one turn, grabbing his elbow as the ground broke away under his heel.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Alaric wouldn’t be pleased to lose another son up here,” I said.

Sindri laughed. “I would have stopped at the bottom.”

Gorgoth followed, kicking footholds for himself at each step; Gog scampered free rather than risk getting squashed if the giant fell.

We found Sim and Grumlow sharing a pipe, sprawled on the rocks in the sunshine all at ease.

The caves were almost harder to see as we drew closer. Black caves in a black cliff with black interiors. I spotted three entrances, one big enough to grow an oak in.

“Something lives here,” Gorgoth said.

I looked for signs, bones or scat around the cave mouth. “There’s nothing,” I said. “What makes you say there is?”

Expressions came hard to a face like Gorgoth’s, but enough of the ridges and furrows moved to let a keen observer know that something puzzled him. “I can hear them,” he said.

“Keen ears and keen eyes. I can’t hear anything. Just the wind.” I stopped and closed my eyes as Tutor Lundist taught me, and let the wind blow. I let the mountain noises flow through me. I counted away the beat of my heart and the sigh of breath. Nothing.

“I hear them,” Gorgoth said.

“Let’s go careful then,” I said. “Time for your bow, Brother Row, good thing you didn’t waste an arrow on that bird.”

We tethered the horses and made ready. I took my sword in hand. Sindri unslung the axe from his back, a fine weapon with silver-chased scrollwork on the blade behind the cutting edge. And we moved in closer. I led in from downwind, an old habit that cost us half an hour traversing the slopes. From fifty yards the wind brought a hint of the inhabitants, an animal stink, faint but rank. “Our friends keep a clean front doorstep,” I said. “Not bears or mountain cats. Can you still hear them, Gorgoth?”

He nodded. “They’re talking about food, and battle.”

“Curiouser and curiouser,” I said. I could hear nothing.

We came by slow steps to the great cave mouth flanked by two smaller mouths and several cracks a man might slip through. Standing before the cave it seemed impossible that I had missed it from across the slopes. Apart from one shattered bone wedged between two rocks there was no sign of habitation. Except for the stink.

Gorgoth stepped in first. He carried a crude flail in his belt, just three thick chains on a wooden haft, set with twists of sharp metal. A leather apron kept the chains from shredding his legs as he ran. I’d never seen him take the weapon in hand, and somehow he seemed more scary unarmed. Gog walked behind Gorgoth with Sindri and me to flank him, then Sim and Grumlow, Row at the rear eyeing everything with suspicion.

“We can’t go far,” Row said. “Too dark.” He didn’t sound upset.

Gog lifted his hand and flames sprung from his fingertips. Row stifled a curse.

I looked back out across the mountain slopes. The fan of rocks and dirt spreading from the cave mouth reminded me of something. Random thoughts scratched each other at the back of my mind, fighting for form, for the words to say what they meant.

“We’ll go on in,” I said. “A little way. I want to hear what Gorgoth hears.” He’d been right about the caves after all.

Toward the back of the cavern several tunnels led into the mountain. The larger passage led up at a shallow gradient. “That one.”

We moved in. Underfoot the tunnel lay grit-floored, strewn with small rocks, but the walls were smooth, almost slick. The shadows moved and danced as Gog followed Gorgoth, his burning hand throwing a vast shadow-Gorgoth ahead of us. Fifty yards brought us to an almost spherical chamber with the tunnel leading on behind it, now heading up almost as steeply as the slopes outside. The fire glow gave the place memories of the cathedral at Shartres, our shadows processing over smooth rock on every side.

“Plato came to such a cave,” I said. “And saw the whole world on its walls.”

“Your pardon?” Sindri said.

I shook my head. “See here?” I pointed to a slick depression in the rock close by, as if a giant had sunk his thumb into soft mud and left his imprint.

“What is it?” Gog asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. But it looked familiar. Like a pothole in a riverbed.